Deeplinks Blog posts about Open Access

EFF works to inform the world about breaking issues in the world of technology policy and civil liberties. And one of our best ways of communicating with our friends and members is through our nearly-weekly newsletter, EFFector. Last week, we sent out a very special EFFector: a deep dive, single-issue edition that got into the nitty-gritty of open access and research. To keep the conversation going, we are publishing it here on the Deeplinks blog as well.

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When Diego Gomez, a biology master’s student at the University of Quindio in Colombia, shared a colleague’s thesis with other scientists over the Internet, he was doing what any other science grad student would do: sharing research he found useful so others could benefit from it and build on it. Indeed, this kind of sharing is the norm in academia, just as it is elsewhere in our increasingly social media-driven online world.

Publicly Funded Research Should Be Open to the Public

When the public pays for research, the public should have free access to that research. You shouldn’t have to buy expensive journal subscriptions or academic database access in order to read research that was paid for with federal funding. That’s the simple premise of FASTR, the Fair Access to Science and Technology Research Act (S. 779, H.R. 1477). As we near the end of the 2015-16 session of Congress, the clock is ticking for FASTR.